Trudy Myers's Blog, page 31

Martian Shelter 4

We’re going to look at a different style of shelter this time. Something a little more complicated to build, I suppose, but which could be more... comfy, should we say?
This shelter is underground. Deep underground, not just some sand kicked over it. Building it would take tunnel-boring machines, which are quite heavy. Perhaps these would be shipped before people were sent, along with some robots to use the machines to bore out a network of tunnels and living quarters. Yes, apparently, some people are ready to go back to living in caves.
But ‘underground’ does not need to mean dark and unwelcoming. I watched an episode of a science show on Netflicks a couple weeks back, where the people were digging out a series of tunnels under New York City. They had some complicated equipment on the roof of a warehouse that gathered and concentrated sunlight before it was piped into the tunnels. Yes, I did say concentrated and piped. The tunnels they created were fully lighted, and with smooth, level floors, ceilings and walls, seemed far distant from a creepy cave.
The theory about living in man-made tunnels on Mars is that the gravity is weak and Mars doesn’t have any quakes, so you wouldn’t need as much support to hold up the ceilings; and there ‘probably’ would not be any moisture seepage. But, this plan does call for some heavy-duty insulation. Martian air may be thin, but Martian dirt and rocks are cold! Even without that insulation, the dirt and rocks would keep that nasty radiation out.
Of course, there are some drawbacks to this idea. There always are, right? All that equipment would be expensive to get there. And once it finishes digging out that first small habitat, then what? Oh, if there’s a big influx of immigrants, the equipment could be busy for years or decades, forming a city here, a city there... But eventually, one assumes, it will become obsolete or unneeded. A lot of money to just let rust away.
And it’s possible there’s more water on Mars than we think, so seepage could be a problem. With all the insulation installed to keep the internal temperature agreeable, we might not even know if seepage was occurring. I hear some of you thinking ‘Then it’s not a problem,’ but that’s not necessarily true. There could be some kind of mold, fungus or other organism that could start growing, possibly leading to health problems for our colonists. Water flows, and ice can expand and create cracks. This could - over time - undermine (so to speak) our efforts at adequate support.
If you own a house, you know you need to keep an eye open for such things, and if you don’t deal with small problems that crop up, you’ll eventually pay for it with a huge repair bill. But these tunnels would not be for an individual’s use; it sounds more like they would be cities, as least to begin with. Owned by committee, you might say. Would that ‘committee’ have the foresight to watch for and deal with these types of problems while they were small? Or would they be political entities, always kicking the financial can down the road?
Okay, if you don’t like the idea of a cave-dwelling, we’ll keep looking. I’ll see what else I can ‘dig up’ for you to consider.
http://www.imagineeringezine.com/e-zi...

Martian Shelter 3

Today, let’s take a look at the 3rd design for a Martian home:
3. A greenhouse-type structure constructed of multiple layers of plastic film, built in such a way that visible light could get in, but infrared light (heat) could not get back out. That type of glass is sometimes used in Earth greenhouses, and could plastic be any more difficult?
Seems a bit unusual, to think of living in a greenhouse. Houseplants are one thing, but to actually live in your garden? I suppose one could get used to it, as long as you don’t grow something that sets off your hay fever. And to avoid the ‘fishbowl’ feeling, you could erect walls in some of the more private areas, even if those ‘walls’ were only curtains.
Have they really thought this through? There’s still all that harsh radiation that doesn’t seem to be considered, and will multiple layers of flimsy plastic keep enough heat in during the Martian night? The dust on Mars gets blown around quite a bit, despite the thin air, and settles onto everything. The rovers using solar panels have to hunker down and conserve their energy whenever a dust storm comes along, some of which encompass the entire planet and last for weeks. If solar panels can’t get enough power to work, how will plants do in constant shadow?
Not too thrilled about this one, either. That under-ground balloon is looking better.
Like I said, no split-level ranches, no colonials or tudors. At least the concept of a greenhouse is familiar, so maybe we’ll find something we can wrap our heads around yet. You never know, the next one might be exactly what you want!
http://www.imagineeringezine.com/e-zi...

Martian Shelter 2

Okay, last time, we looked at the balloon-type house/shelter. It sounded like a lot of work to get it set up, supported, tied down and covered in sand. Not to mention the care that would be needed to see that it didn’t get any holes poked in it. Would it come with a set of ‘instant bandages’ you could use to patch any accidental holes? Personally, I think I’d make that a condition before I agreed to buy, but maybe that’s just me.
Today, we’re going to look at a slightly different possibility, one that apparently does not require shoveling sand around:
2. An above-ground shelter made from multiple layers of plastic film with low density foam between them. The thinking is that the Martian atmosphere is so thin, it would not ‘suck’ heat from the shelter walls. I’m left wondering about the radiation that was considered omni-present and probably deadly in years gone by. And... really? It’s cold, but it’s a thin cold, so that doesn’t count? Right, and 120° in the desert is hot, but it’s dry, so that’s okay.
Can you show me the Heat/AC power consumption on that type of shelter?
We recently visited the Kennedy Space Center, where the display for Atlantis (shuttle) explained that excess heat was disposed of by running tubes of heated liquid into the shuttle bay doors, which were opened to let that heat disperse. There’s a lot less ‘atmosphere’ in space than on Mars, but heat only gets sucked away when you want it to be, and doesn’t get sucked away when you want to keep it? You have to work at it, either way, and I’m just not convinced flimsy plastic and foam is enough insulation.
Also, I have to assume there is some sort of support system for this ‘tent’. Who gets to put that up? And tie the walls down? Once again, it’s going to need air locks, so will those be pre-fabbed and attached to the ‘walls’ before lift-off? But, since there isn’t any mention of burying it in the sand, would there be sections of the plastic film that would be transparent so the new Martians can look outside and see what the weather is like? Of course, the low density foam in those areas would need to be transparent, also, but I’m doubting that foam could avoid distorting the view.
Well, this is a little mind-boggling, isn’t it? You wanted a cottage to raise a family in, maybe with a picket fence, and all we’ve looked at so far indicates your actual choices are either a balloon buried in sand or a tent that may or may not retain any heat when the wind blows. Buck up, we’ve just begun to look at the possibilities. We’ll find something that’s just right for you.

http://www.imagineeringezine.com/e-zi...

Martian Shelter 1

People are finally giving serious thought to the possibility of living someplace off the Earth. Thought we’d take a look at what those new house designs might look like. Seeing what might be available, once we get to go. We’ll start with Mars, since everybody’s so excited about the possibility of getting there in the next decade or so.
The first shelters will be shipped to Mars from Earth. Maybe they’ll be shipped ahead of time and need to be activated when humans arrive, but probably, the shelter will arrive with them. After all, it worked on the moon, though the shelter in that case was a piece of space ship. It served the purpose for the short time that anybody was there. They even brought part of it back with them. Kind of like living in your car, do you suppose?
So here’s some of the ideas that are floating around for housing on Mars:
1. One suggestion for an early shelter is an inflated balloon-type structure. Think of some kind of thick, air-tight fabric that could be unfolded and laid out in the desired position, hooked up to a supply of air, and blown up. The fabric could be augmented with support structures, and finally, the entire thing could be covered with sand for extra insulation, both from thermal variance and radiation. The average Martian temperature is -80° F, plus the air is mighty thin, so you have to have plenty of insulation. You’d probably have to tie this puppy down before you started inflating it, or risk it floating away in the breeze, but I’m sure the instructions would point that out.
After reading about this proposal, I’m left wondering how the door would be added. It would have to be an air lock, or else opening the door really would mean you’d let all the heat out! I keep thinking an airlock would be made of metal, but perhaps they could fashion them out of plastic or something similar, and they could be added to the ‘balloon’ before it left Earth. Would they only put one door in this balloon, or would they add a back door, too? And who is going to shovel all that sand on top and around? Would they dig a hole in the ground to hold the balloon? Sounds like a lot of hard work, if the ground is frozen or otherwise solid. What’s the circumference of this balloon? Will they have to walk (or drive) all over it to get the sand distributed?
I suppose it has possibilities, but it really sounds an awful lot like a fixer-upper.
Well, phooey. We’ve only looked at one possibility, and I’m out of words. Can’t make these things too long, or so they tell me. We’ll have to continue this search for a new home next week, because there are definitely other possibilities. But don’t get your hopes up; I didn’t see a single split-level ranch on the list.
http://www.imagineeringezine.com/e-zi...

A Girl’s Best Friend...

...is a Diamond... Planet?
55 Cancri-e was discovered in 2004, circling a star not that far from us. It was called a “super-Earth”, because it was rocky like the Earth and larger. Its radius is twice Earth’s, making its mass about 8 times ours, while it speeds around its star in only 18 hours. To do that, it has to be so close to the star’s surface that the planet’s surface reaches temperatures around 3,900° F (2,100° C). {Just a little warmer than Nebraska in August.}
{By the way, the ‘e’ of 55 Cancri-e means this was the 4th planet found in orbit around this star. (The star itself is designated A.)The other 3 reside even closer. Where does the star end and planet(s) begin? More recently, a 5th planet - ‘f’ - has been discovered, with a year lasting about 261 Earth days.}
If 55 Cancri-e had a planetary chemistry similar to Earth’s, the temperature and mass might mean it was covered with oozing ‘supercritical fluids’ (gases at such a high pressure they would act more like liquids). So it was imagined, at one time. But further study has revealed that it has a planetary chemistry far different.
For one thing, it apparently has no water on it at all.
Astronomers felt 55 Cancri-e was probably composed almost exclusively of carbon (diamond & graphite), iron, silicon carbide and possibly silicates. More than 1/3 of its mass could be pure diamond, which would be more than the entire Earth. Try sticking that into an engagement ring!
However, the diamond part was probably not just one big chunk. They thought the planet’s surface was covered in graphite and diamond rock, rather than our familiar water and granite. Actually, the Earth has far, far less carbon in comparison. So they tried to figure out what that difference meant. This different planetary chemistry could mean 55 Cancre-e could have had a very different thermal evolution than Earth and strange plate tectonic processes, which would mean bizarre types of volcanism, mountain formation and seismic activity.
But a new analysis indicated that 55 CancriA (the star in question) had more oxygen than previously thought. That might mean 55 Cancri-e might not have quite as much carbon as they had thought. Or it might mean nothing. The processes of star and planet formation are not fully understood, but it is known that the composition of a planet does not always match that of its parent. So the studies continued.
In 2016, observers detected hydrogen, helium and possibly hydrogen cyanide in ‘e’s atmosphere. In 2017, they decided there might be a global ocean... made of lava, so no skinny dipping. And that e’s atmospheric pressure was about 1.4 bar, so a slightly thicker atmosphere than ours.
If all this sounds familiar, well... We visited the 55 Cancri system on or about 6Sept2017, in the 2nd episode of my ‘Weird Planets’ series of blogs. But I think I found more details this time, so hope you enjoyed ‘catching up’.
Oh, yes, in July 2014, the International Astronomical Union launched a process for giving ‘proper’ names to some exoplanets and their host stars. The name selected for 55 CancriA was Copernicus, and e was named Janssen. (Yes, all his known siblings got named, too.)

https://www.space.com/18011-super-ear...

A Never Ending Pit

Depression sucks.
There was a time when people didn’t talk about relatives who suffered from depression. Those doing the suffering were expected to also not talk about it. Nobody wanted to hear you were sad. If you had kidney stones or a broken leg, friends wanted to hear all the sordid details (or at least they said they did) so that they could commiserate, wish you well and internally think, “At least I’m not having that problem!”
But there were no known fixes for depression, or many other mental problems, so no one wanted to hear about them. What good would it do to wish you well when everybody knew there was no way to fix the problem?
There are a number of treatments for depression these days, usually chemical. And it’s good that there’s several treatment options, because some of them won’t work well with your body chemistry, some will have terrible side effects, AND after you’ve found one that works, your body will eventually become used to it, and it will cease to work.
Okay, I’ve been on 4 different anti-depressants in the last 6-9 months. It took me time to realize my ‘old’ pill wasn’t working any more, and more time to make my doctor realize I was serious about needing a new anti-depressant. Then 3 weeks on a new medication (You’re supposed to give each medication 6 weeks to see how well it’s going to work.) that had me sleeping 14 hours a day and groggy the rest of the time, then on a half dose of another medicine, got it upped to a full dose, and now I’ve been on yet another medicine for 1 week.
During that time period, I’ve gotten so used to the major symptoms of depression that they almost seem ‘normal’. I am depressed; I give mostly the same answers to the questions that are intended to see if I’m depressed; I score the same or possibly worse, depending on the day.
I’ve gotten used to the major symptoms. Now I’m starting to notice the little things I don’t remember noticing before:
I can only focus on 1 thing at a time. If somebody interrupts me to ask a question, I can’t shift gears to answer them. I just sit there, engine running (I’m ready to do something) and gears grinding (my thoughts are still on what I was doing, but it no longer makes sense to me, and eventually, I will start wondering why I was interrupted and what did they want me to do?)
Flowers for Algernon. I don’t remember the author’s name. And it’s mainstream fiction; I had to read it in some English literature class, probably in high school. But the last of the story describes the mood that sometimes overwhelms me these days; I can remember that I used to have a brain. One that worked good.

Hiatus

Dear Friends,
Please forgive me. About a month ago, a friend came to me with a request. He had lost the gloves for his Darth Vader costume and needed to replace them. He had the pattern and the leather, so... how hard could it be? Once I figured out the pattern, how to adjust it to fit his hand, and how to keep my (hand) stitches even and straight, it turned out not to be too difficult, just a huge time suck. After 3 days of devoting hours to a fresh start incorporating all the things I'd figured out, I am about half way done with his right glove. But nothing else is getting done in my house. So I need 2-3 days to finish this glove, another week to do the left glove, and then a few days to get a new post ready. So... look for my next post around 23May. Let's hope my hands have stopped cramping by then.

Thanks for understanding.
Trudy

Be Cool, Star

Unfortunately, I only have 1 reference article for this week’s blog, and it was listed as ‘Opinion’. So, if you don’t already, take this week’s blog with 2-3 grains of salt. I did try to follow the link to the original article in the Astronomical Journal, but I’m not subscribed to it, so couldn’t get past their first page. From the looks of some of the titles listed for their current issue, their articles are seriously geeky, which is why I sometimes have to rely on someone else to explain it to me. Having said all that, hand me an ice cube for my drink, and let’s get started.NASA’s Spitzer space telescope (launched in 2003) has found 14 of the coldest stars known, but it’s expected that far more are waiting to be discovered. These 14 objects are hundreds of light-years away and are thought to have temperatures 350 to 620 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s bitterly cold for stars.These are ‘failed stars’, also known as brown dwarfs, which have been known to exist for years. Spitzer and its sister, WISE, could recognize them by the hundreds before too long. Spitzer was assigned specific patches of space to study, but WISE has been tasked with studying the entire sky. WISE’s task is 40 times the size of Spitzer’s.Brown dwarfs form like any other star, out of collapsing balls of gas and dust. But they are puny things, and never collect enough mass to ignite nuclear fusion and start shining. The smallest known so far are 5 to 10 times the mass of Jupiter, and there are giant gas planets of that mass around other stars. Without nuclear fusion, what little internal heat these bodies started with eventually faded away.It’s possible that WISE could find an object about Neptune-sized (or bigger) in the far reaches of our solar system. Raise your hand if you’ve heard the story of Planet X, a large planet so far out we can’t see it, but it has some disruptive tendencies for the orbits of the outer planets, dwarf planets and other objects we know of. Some scientists speculate it might even be a brown dwarf companion to our sun.So are these 14 examples of planets or stars? Well, they’re hot for one, and unbelievably cold for the other. I assume someone will decide what they are, eventually.
www.networkworld.com/article/2231137/...

Where is Calukmul?

The original paragraph I saw about Calakmul consisted of 39 words, but something caught my attention. Usually, I might find 3 or 4 articles on the subject, each 1-2 pages long, and each repeating (or possibly contradicting) information in the other articles.
Calukmul’s different. The wikipedia article must be over 20 pages, and I don’t rely solely on wikipedia. So, let’s start, keeping in mind that I may have to boil things down drastically.
Calakmul (AKA Kalakmul) was a large and powerful Mayan city in what is now the Mexican state of Campeche, deep in the jungles of the Yucatan greater Peten Basin, 35 km (22 miles) from the Guatemalan border. During the Classic Period, Calakmul administered a large domain known as the Kingdom of the Snake. This region was marked by the emblem glyph of the snake head, read as ‘Kaan’. It is believed that the city existed from 550 BC to 900 AD. It held ‘powerhouse’ status from 500 AD to 800 AD.
Some of the major buildings can be traced back to at least 350 AD, with a 40-foot tall monument built sometime between 400 and 200 BC. This city’s long life gave plenty of time to create huge structures, following the Maya tradition of enlarging existing buildings by adding new layers and extending the lower floors. The earliest dated inscription found there is from 431 AD.
During the height of Calukmul’s existance, the city is believed to have had a population of 50,000, and 6,750 structures have been found there. Structure 2, their great pyramid, is the largest structure, standing over 45 m (148 ft), and contains 4 tombs. As explained in the previous paragraph, in MesoAmerica, the pyramid was increased in size by building upon the existing temple. Calakmul’s central monumental architecture covers about 2 sq km (0.77 sq miles), and the entire city - mostly covered with dense residential structures - is 20 sq km (7.7 sq miles).
Calukmul was linked to allied cities by causeway. It sits on a rise some 115 ft above and east of a large seasonal swamp, which was an important source of water. This seasonal swamp was linked to a sophisticated water-control system that encircled an 8.5 square mile area, considered the inner city. The swamp also provided fertile soil along its edge and access to abundant flint nodules. The rise was a limestone dome which the Maya had leveled. Homes began along the edge of the swamp, but during the Classic period, they were also built on high ground and small islands in the swamp.
But the swamp was not the only source of water, for Calakmul had an extensive system of at least 13 reservoirs, including the largest one found in the Maya world. Together, these held enough water to serve 50,000 to 100,000 people. There’s no sign that these reservoirs were used to irrigate crops, which were apparently dependant on the seasonal swamp, as mentioned before.
From 1 to 1000 AD, this area received regular rainfall, which would have made it fairly easy to support the city’s population of 50,000. Growing up in small towns, this sounds huge to me. But I also spent a large portion of my adult life living in Kansas City and Omaha, either one of which would dwarf Calukmul. When you look at the entire Snake kingdom, there were also 20 secondary cities, tertiary and quaternary sites, and rural areas. The total population of this 5,000 sq mile kingdom is estimated to have reached 1.75 million during the late Classic period. However, during the Terminal Class period, Calukmul’s population dramatically declined, and the rural population plummeted.
Throughout the Classic Period, Calukmul had an intense rivalry with the city of Tikal, which lay 100 km (62 miles) southeast. At one point, Calukmul and its allies defeated Tikal, but 150 years later, Tikal rose up anew, and ultimately, Calukmul not only lost its powerhouse status, but ceased to exist at all. Calukmul’s recorded history ends abruptly in 909 AD, about 200 years after Tikal defeated its king and sapped its power.
The great rivalry between Calukmul and Tikel could have been more than trying to prove which city could grab the most resources. Tikel was a powerful city before Calukmul. Tikal was strongly influenced by the central Mexican metropolis of Teotihuacan, and its rulers were male only. Calukmul, on the other hand, seems derived from the city of El Mirador, and both a king and queen often ruled together. However, for whatever reason, when I came across a (partial) list of Calukmul rulers, it assumed all the names were kings, with no explanation of why no queens’ names were included.
The long abandoned Calukmul was rediscovered by air on December 29, 1931. Its current name is Mayan for ‘two adjacent pyramids’. In ancient times, it was Ox Te’ Tuun, which means ‘Three Stones.’ It was visited in 1932-1938, and a map was begun of the city, but work then ceased until 1982-1994. It is now a UNESCO site, contained within a UNESCO biodiversity reserve, and is the subject of a large-scale project of the National Institute of Anthropology and History. Unfortunately, the city was built with a soft limestone, so it is suffering from severe erosion, and many of the earlier inscriptions cannot be made out.
I’m very taken by this information, which was fairly uniform over all 3 articles I chose. In fact, after reading the Wikipedia article, the other 2 I chose were... monotonously uniform with it, although not nearly as heavy with intimate history of battles and the names of warring kings. But given these facts as I’ve gathered them, I can almost picture Calukmul, from start to finish, but particularly during its hey-day. Of course, that doesn’t mean it actually looked like anything I’ve dreamt up, but it’s more than what I’ve gotten from the few Maya ruins I’ve actually visited. What about you? Do you see anything more here than armies at war?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calakmu...

Cold and Salty

When you and I think of someplace nice to live, we probably aren’t thinking “really cold and super salty”. And yet, there are organisms that do.After 18 months of gathering cold salty water from remote lakes located in Antarctica - including during the extreme winter - scientists discovered... microbes! One location was Deep Lake, whose water is so salty, it remains unfrozen down to -20°.At least one strain of microbes contained plasmids, which are small molecules of DNA which can replicate independently in a host cell and often contain useful genes. A plasmid can also grab a piece of DNA from the host cell and incorporate it in itself. They’re certainly complicated, for being so tiny.Viruses have a protective protein coat that helps them invade unsuspecting cells. Once inside, the virus forces the cell to replicate virus DNA and package it into protein shells, which are pushed out of the ‘nest’ to find their own host cell and repeat the process. Most viruses damage the host cell.One particular plasmid - called pR1SE - is so much like a virus, the scientists weren’t sure how to classify it. Before this Antarctica discovery, plasmids were known to move from cell to cell when 2 cells were touching, or they wandered around as a piece of naked DNA. However, pR1SE must have thought it too cold in Antarctica to wander around naked, so it had developed a coating of proteins that could attach to a cell wall. Once attached, the protein coat would produce buds (called vesicles), and those buds broke off, taking bits of plasmid DNA to do the same with other cells of the same species.Virus? Plasmid? This pR1SE version seemed to be something in between. In fact, having discovered this mechanism, scientists are wondering if possibly viruses are ‘more advanced’ versions of plasmids.Another microbe found in those hypersaline lakes is a ‘cannibal virus’, or virophage, the 3rd virophage ever discovered. This type of virus only infects cells that are already infected with a ‘regular’ virus. As the regular virus uses the cell’s mechanisms to reproduce copies of itself, the virophage inserts its genome into the virus, thus getting the virus to reproduce virophageDNA. The number of copies of the regular virus is greatly reduced, so damage is reduced.There’s plenty of tiny life in them there super-cold, super-frigid lakes, from things that hardly seem like life (regular plasmids), to something slightly more advanced (pR1SE), through another advancement (viruses) and right to something (virophage) that can try to limit the damage done by the prior version (viruses). Who could have guessed that life in Antarctica would be so complicated?So, let’s take a lesson from this. Life is complicated. If you are creating a new planet or even just a new continent, try to make the life cycle complicated. I have problems with a planet of sand that produces butterflies and giant worms, and that’s all. If the giant worms only have butterflies to eat, how do they get so big? And what do the butterflies eat?
https://phys.org/news/2017-08-antarct...